Loughner Sentenced to Life

TUCSON, Ariz.—One by one they faced him, the young man who had forever changed their lives with quick squeezes of a trigger on a chilly January morning outside a grocery store.

Wearing a tan suit and a blank expression, 24-year-old
Jared Loughner
sat quietly through a storm of anger and tears in a courtroom Thursday morning before a federal judge sentenced him to seven life sentences plus 140 years in prison.

"Mr. Loughner will never step outside a prison," said Judge
Larry A. Burns
of the U.S. District Court in Tucson.

Asked by the judge if he wanted to speak, Mr. Loughner declined.

ENLARGE

Jared Loughner in an undated photo from the Pima County sheriff's office.
Getty Images

The sentencing was a legal formality. Mr. Loughner in August pleaded guilty to killing six people and wounding 13 on Jan. 8, 2011, including former U.S. Rep.
Gabrielle Giffords
.
He struck a deal with prosecutors for a life sentence to avoid the death penalty.

The hearing did, however, represent an intense finale to an odyssey whose effects are still being felt by victims and more broadly in the state, which has undergone a political reordering in the wake of the shootings.

It also marked the first time Ms. Giffords had seen Mr. Loughner in person since the day of the shooting nearly two years ago.

Mr. Loughner had set out to kill Ms. Giffords at a constituent-meeting event that day, prosecutors said. For months afterward, Mr. Loughner, a diagnosed schizophrenic, refused to believe Ms. Giffords had survived the close-range shot to her head. Forcible administration of antipsychotic drugs brought Mr. Loughner to competency so he could face prosecution. His prison therapist told court officials that he felt remorse for his actions as the medication began to take hold.

Ms. Giffords rose slowly from a courtroom bench Thursday, holding the hand of her husband, retired astronaut
Mark Kelly.
The couple walked to a podium before the judge and turned to face Mr. Loughner, seated behind a desk several feet away. Ms. Giffords still struggles to speak, and she stood silently beside Mr. Kelly as he addressed Mr. Loughner in a forceful voice.

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"Mr. Loughner, for the first and last time you're going to hear directly from Gabby and me about what you took away from us and, just as important, what you did not," he said. "So pay attention."

He told Mr. Loughner that his wife struggles to speak and walk and is partially blind and paralyzed in her right arm.

"The plans she had for our family and her career are immeasurably altered," Mr. Kelly said. Ms. Giffords retired from Congress this year and was succeeded by her former aide,
Ron Barber,
who won her seat in a special election in June. State Democrats had high hopes for Ms. Giffords as the future of the party and had wanted her to run for the U.S. Senate. This week, Democrats lost that seat to a Republican,
Jeff Flake.

Mr. Barber, who was also shot and spoke at the hearing, was trailing in his re-election contest, which on Thursday remained too close to call.

Mr. Kelly said the shooting took away his wife's lifelong gift for communicating with people. "If she were not born with the name Gabby, someone would have given it to her," he said. "Now she struggles to deliver each and every sentence."

But, Mr. Kelly added: "You may have put a bullet in her head, but you haven't put a dent in her spirit." Ms. Giffords kissed her husband on the cheek when he finished.

Mr. Kelly was the last victim to speak in an emotionally exhausting, two-hour recounting of mental and physical wounds.

But Mr. Kelly also took the opportunity to criticize politicians for the lack of progress on gun-control and related measures, saying the nation "has done nothing" after mass shootings like those in Tucson and Aurora, Colo.

Some victims spoke with their backs to Mr. Loughner, while others turned to address him directly. Most said they wanted Mr. Loughner not only to know about the pain he caused them, but also that they have found ways to rebuild their lives and to work to honor the memories of the dead. Afterward, they returned to a cluster of friends and fellow victims who sat together in the courtroom, and hugged and wiped away tears.

"You pointed a weapon and shot me, three times. You turned a civics lesson into a nightmare. I've wanted to take you by the shoulders and shake you and scream at you as if that would help," said
Susan Hileman,
who had accompanied her 9-year-old neighbor, Christina-Taylor Green, to the grocery-store event to meet Ms. Giffords. Ms. Green was killed.

"Jared, when you took my precious Dorwan, you ruined my whole life," said
Mavy Stoddard,
whose husband was killed shielding her. Looking directly at Mr. Loughner as she spoke, she said, "You took away my life, my love and my reason for living.…I am so lonesome. I hate living without him."

But Ms. Stoddard, who held her husband in her arms as he died on the sidewalk, said to Mr. Loughner: "I forgive you."

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